Around 14 lakh members of primary forest co-operative societies will enjoy the bonus for past tendu leaves collection work.

Chief Minister Raman Singh was at the state-level conference of District collectors, where he also announced a Tendu Leaves Bonus Festival, from December 1 to December 10.

At the conference, Chief Minister praised the district collectors for their management of bonus distribution process, assessed the work done by the districts under various schemes, and said that he would be visiting some of the districts, during the tendu leaves festival.

For this summer season, forester families were paid Rs 1800 per sack as labour charge, which has been decided to be increased to Rs 2500 for the incoming season.

In review of the Electricity Department of the state, Chief Minister also announced electrification of all 3.90 lakh electricity-deprived homes of Chhattisgarh within the next 10 months, under Centre's Ujjwala Yojana.

Further, he directed the district collectors to work in a time-bound manner.

Singh also asked the Secretary of Electricity Department and M.D. of Electricity distributing company to pay a visit to the remote villages of Narayanpur and Sukma districts to know about the problems regarding the electrification work.

Weighing in to the implementation of Centre's LPG distribution scheme under Ujjwala Yojana, Singh suggested increasing the outreach from 20,000 households to two lakh households, with the view to reach the aim of providing domestic fuel to 35 lakh poor households.

Under Revenue Book Circular (RBC) 6-4, the Chief Minister directed district collectors to begin the process of compensation distribution to farmers for crop damage in drought ridden areas of the state.